Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough,
The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true,
Authentic self.
I'm Lisa A.
Romano,
Your host.
As an award-winning author and certified life coach,
I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind.
I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self.
My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening.
In this podcast,
I'll share insights,
Tools,
And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery.
Namaste,
Dear one.
So today we're going to be talking about how you can feel safer in your own body despite a painful past.
So today we're exploring what it means to,
Well,
Why do we need to feel safe in our body?
If we don't feel safe in our body,
That's where we have to start.
So the first place to start is to acknowledge that you do not feel safe in your body.
How do you know that you do not feel safe in your body?
Well,
Maybe you ruminate.
Maybe you have anxiety.
Maybe when you walk into the room,
You are so hypervigilant,
Your energy starts to go outside of you,
And you are able to pick up on that person's mood and that person's,
Where did that person's eyes dart to?
Then you follow what that person looked at.
Now you're creating a story in your head about this whole thing that just happened in terms of where this person's eyes have darted,
And you get caught up in your mind,
And you get caught up in the story.
So rather than being present in your body and feeling your authentic feelings,
You are now so hypervigilant,
Which basically means that if you think about yourself as an auric field of energy,
You push your energy out,
Which is what hypervigilance is.
Hypervigilance is I'm detached from myself,
And I'm focusing on the outside.
Think about focus as your energy.
So you walk into a room,
You're hyperaware,
You're hyperfocused,
Which is hypervigilance,
And you're picking up all of what is happening around you.
So you're detached from the self.
Anytime that you're detached from the self,
Imagine that you're being dangled over the Empire State Building.
You are not on the ground.
You are not grounded in the self.
So when we're hypervigilant,
That's essentially,
I'll use that metaphor to help you understand that's what's happening to you.
It's like you're being dangled outside a window,
And everything that's happening around you,
You're super hyper aroused.
You're so aware that you might fall.
You don't feel safe.
Now let's talk about why you don't feel safe.
If you did not have parents who were grounded in their energy,
In their psychology,
In their identity,
In who they were,
If your parents were not socially aware,
Psychologically aware,
Emotionally regulated,
If they did not understand the power of the self and how important it was and necessary it was for them to make you feel grounded,
Well then you can't be grounded.
If you think of yourself as an energy wire without being grounded,
Now who were supposed to ground you?
Your parents.
They were supposed to be the initial grounding wire.
Now if they're not grounded in the self,
Dear one,
The energy being that you are cannot be grounded.
Please,
It could be no other way.
Dear one,
That is not your fault.
It is not your fault if you have anxiety,
If you have depression,
If you have codependency.
Even in lots of cases when it comes to narcissism,
It is the result of severe childhood emotional trauma,
Adverse experiences that have gone underground,
That have gone.
.
.
Well,
They're experiences that we were never taught how to experience and now our ego,
Our innocent ego has to take over and defend ourselves against these threats in the outer world.
If we don't take on this armor,
We are afraid at the subconscious level that we will implode.
In lots of the cases,
Narcissism is a survival strategy.
It's self-preservation.
The problem with narcissism is that because of the nature of this disorder,
People who are narcissistic do not look within.
They are not self-aware.
They don't do self-inquiry work.
They are so hyper-focused on the outside and as well as egocentric,
But what they're doing is they're gaining their sense of power from the outside through dominance,
Through power,
Through manipulation,
And through various forms of control,
And they lack empathy,
So they have a sense of entitlement.
These are pervasive patterns.
This isn't a one-off,
The person has a bad day.
This is a pervasive pattern.
If you've grown up,
Let's say,
In the home of a narcissistic parent who saw you as an extension of themselves versus you are an.
.
.
I love my little stick figures.
Versus being.
.
.
Now,
Think about a stick figure and imagine yourself as a single entity as a stick figure in a world of others,
Right?
There's others and then there's self.
When you have a narcissistic parent,
You are not allowed to have an identity that is separate from the narcissistic parent.
There is an enmeshment that happens between a narcissistic parent and the child,
And the child naturally wants to feel seen and heard by this narcissistic parent.
This little individual person,
Imagine the stick figure,
Has no other recourse to be able to develop a healthy ego boundary,
Self and other.
Then what happens is that there's a psychological enmeshment.
This little inner child that you once were does not have their own ego identity.
They don't have boundaries.
Why?
You weren't allowed to.
If you think about what happens to us mentally and emotionally,
It all comes down to energy,
If you will.
When you are an inner child and no one is attuning to you emotionally,
Then you're not learning to focus on the self.
What happens in that scenario when no one is teaching you how to focus on yourself because no one's paying attention to you?
Think about your entire operating system,
Your mind,
Your brain,
Your neurology,
Every hormone that's being produced in your body,
Everything is focusing on the outside.
This is hypervigilance.
This is a survival strategy.
Hypervigilance and codependency,
Even narcissism,
Is a survival strategy.
It is the way that we compensate for this lack of self and this detachment within the self,
Albeit it is destructive,
It is maladaptive.
If you are codependent or even a narcissist,
Unless you awaken and do this type of work and really understand that you need to look within to heal what has happened in your heart space and heal the subconscious programs in your mind,
You can croak a codependent.
You can croak as a narcissist.
You will not escape this because the world itself,
The matrix that is reality is governed by patterns and programs.
And so unless you awaken and identify the broken patterns and the faulty beliefs and then break those faulty patterns and beliefs and then work towards creating new patterns of beliefs,
Then you stay on this path and it's not your fault.
So if you're highly codependent,
You're highly empathic,
You're hypervigilant and you are not keeping your energy,
Bringing your energy back to the self.
That means that you don't feel safe in your body.
You look outside of you for a way to feel safe.
What are you looking for?
Well,
You learned as a little child that it wasn't safe to not pay attention to what mommy and daddy were doing.
That if you drop the ball,
If you let go,
Something bad could happen.
I remember being a very young little girl and it was an audible,
It was a conscientious,
I could feel it,
I could see it thought process that was so vivid in my mind,
Uh oh,
My mother hasn't exploded or the house hasn't exploded in two or three days.
It's about to happen.
So imagine the pattern,
Remember the brain is always looking for a pattern.
That's the way source has allowed us to survive,
To find patterns,
Right?
Tony Robbins talks about the seasons being a pattern and when did civilization take off?
When man,
Man,
Woman,
Unisex began to understand the seasons,
Right?
So,
Oh,
I don't have to leave this frontier because it's cold now because I know spring is coming,
Right?
So everything is patterns.
Your life is governed by patterns,
Subconscious pattern,
Because if you don't feel safe in your body,
You're operating through a faulty pattern,
A faulty construct.
So that is not your fault because as a child you develop hypervigilance as a way to survive.
You think if I can pay attention to when mommy's sad and make her a cup of tea,
Then maybe she'll be happy.
You have so much anxiety about mom being upset that you control your anxiety by trying to take care of mom.
This is how codependency gets developed.
This is how we lose ourself.
This is how we become groomed to stay hypervigilant and unfortunately what we do is we only feel safe around people who mirror our mother and father's energy.
That's why we get stuck in narcissistic relationships.
We get stuck in one way relationships.
We get stuck taking care of our siblings.
We get stuck taking care of our in-laws.
No one's taking care of you.
That is your job,
But because you're so hypervigilant and trying to control this pattern within you of anxiety because you don't feel safe in your body,
You are caught up being hypervigilant and attracting people who mirror the energy of the people who wounded you and failed you in the first place.
Eventually,
If you stay on this path long enough,
You will hopefully get to a point where you're able to offer forgiveness,
But not before you pin the tail on the donkey and you consciously recognize the consequence and the cost of emotional neglect on you.
This is why lots of us struggle with feeling anger,
Especially if you're a woman.
You are not allowed to feel anger when you're a child.
You are looked at as the B word if you get angry when you're a woman.
Your father pushes you away and says that you're too aggressive.
Men are turned off by you when you assert yourself.
Now,
There's something to be said about asserting yourself in a healthy way versus being domineering and coming off entitled and lacking empathy for other people and not expecting other people to have a response to your emotional reactions.
There's something to be said about that,
But really taking care of the self is our responsibility.
Very important,
And the more you bring your energy back to the self,
The more safe you're going to feel.
What I would like to offer you is this idea and this concept,
Which I absolutely love,
Is recognizing that you and other people should not be entangled,
That the best way to be in a relationship is interdependent.
When we're codependent,
We're enmeshed,
We're leaning on each other,
There is no separation.
Imagine when you're hypervigilant and you don't feel safe in your body and you're codependent,
What you try to do is you try to bring people,
You draw people into your energy.
It's a complete attraction.
What you're trying to do is get people to be so,
I would say,
Connected to you that you're able to please them.
When you feel like you can please them,
That's when you feel safe.
What if you think about this,
What's a big problem here?
You're not identifying yourself from this other person,
You're enmeshed.
That implies a lack of boundaries,
There are no boundaries.
That implies this idea that if you're not completely enmeshed with this person and you don't know what they're doing 24 hours a day,
And you don't know what they're thinking 24 hours a day,
Or you need to fix them 24 hours a day,
You're not focusing on the self,
You're focusing on other.
What we have to do then is to help you mentally,
Emotionally,
Spiritually,
And cognitively recognize that self and other are separate.
Now,
The tool that I use for this is emotional detachment.
There are various ways to use emotional detachment,
But I think one of the best ways is to understand what it is.
But in order to understand emotional detachment,
You need a certain level of self-awareness.
Now,
Self-awareness is activated through metacognition.
Now,
If you're operating through the amygdala,
Amy,
The amygdala,
And Harry,
The hippocampus,
You operate within the limbic system.
That's like operating from a vacuum that is filled with bats and uncomfortable beliefs and false beliefs about yourself.
So when you allow yourself to feel your feelings,
Remember,
We have to bring all the energy and all the focus back to the self so that you can start developing these psychological boundaries between self and other.
So one of the things that you can do is start using emotional detachment.
And very simply,
When you are out and about,
Just start asking yourself,
Are these my feelings or are these the other person's feelings?
Is this how I feel or is this how they feel?
Did I just create a story in my head about how I think they feel?
Right?
These ideas are really helping breathe detachment into your mind where you have to check yourself,
Because when you're codependent,
You're hyper-vigilant and you're hyper-focused on others.
So you lose self.
So we have to bring awareness back to the self.
The other tool that I use is the 1-2-3 process.
You want to start getting into the habit every day,
All day.
How do I feel?
Now,
When you are saying,
How do I feel,
Imagine that all of this energy that you have been dispersing out into the environment,
It's starting to slowly come back into your mind.
It's starting to slowly take effect on you on the inside.
This idea of self,
It's starting to be called back home.
So again,
Start with,
Is this my stuff or is it their stuff?
Journal,
Is this my stuff or is this their stuff?
Do I want to do this or do they want me to do this?
Or am I trying to please them in agreeing with them?
Because when you do that,
You're giving up on the self and we've got to stop doing that.
So the 1-2-3 process can also help you.
And that is the process of you activating metacognition.
And just through the process of activating metacognition,
You're going to start bringing all of your awareness back to the self.
It's the only way to operate through the authentic self anyway,
Dear one.
You have to do this work.
It's mental and emotional Olympics.
I can tell you that,
But it's worth it.
So you wake up and you ask yourself,
How do I feel?
Or perhaps you find yourself in a really traumatic experience and you've been activated.
CPTSD response has been activated.
Your mind's going,
Your ears are getting hot.
That's one of the signs for me.
And you start to panic.
You just feel this rush of energy and almost like you're going to pass out.
Well,
If you can remember 1-2-3 process and in that moment,
You don't resist anything.
Resistance is what creates the attraction within you.
Whatever you resist,
You persist.
It's like you're saying,
Yes,
It's counterintuitive.
No,
I don't want that.
But the no is so strong and has so much energy attached to the no that it's almost like you're inviting that thing that you're pushing away into your experience,
Right?
So how you start to shift that is by you start accepting what is a little bit less resistance to what is.
So I am experiencing CPTSD response.
I accept that my ears are hot.
I accept that I've been activated.
I accept that this thing happened.
I had an emotional response.
I'm feeling kind of panicked and I accept how I feel.
I'm not going to push it away.
I accept how I feel.
That is you coming back to the self.
You're not focusing on trying to control what's happening outside of you no matter what it is.
You're coming back to the self.
The second step is where do I feel this in my body?
Well,
I can feel my heart starting to race.
My head feels like it's full of cotton.
I feel kind of spacey and my body is really telling me danger,
Danger,
Danger.
Great.
Again,
That's you coming back to the self,
Taking back all this hyper awareness and all this hyper vigilance.
That is you separating from other and coming back to the self.
You have to separate from the environment and come back to the self.
The third step is where everything shifts for you.
I call it the money step.
It's the decision step.
Codependents don't make decisions.
They stay in the muck.
People have low self-worth.
They stay in the muck.
People that expect the world to reject them,
They stay in the muck.
People that expect bad things to happen,
Stay in the muck.
Even though every single one of us is a creator and we have the power to change our life in any moment,
Many of us because of subconscious programming and we're not doing this development work,
This mind development work,
Inner child recovery work,
Codependency recovery work,
Shadow work,
Call it whatever you want.
Because we're not doing that work consciously,
We stay stuck.
But the minute we do the work,
We get unstuck.
So the third step is you're going to make a decision about how you feel.
So the first question you ask yourself is,
What about this situation can't I control?
Well,
I can't control that I've been triggered.
I can't control that I feel this way.
Not yet.
I can't control that that email came through and it triggered me.
I can't control the story that's already taken off in my head.
It feels like it's on its own loop,
Right?
I can't control that.
Okay,
Great.
I can't control that person's perception of me.
I can't control that my boss thinks that I'm a failure.
I can't control any of that.
Okay,
What can I control?
I can control whether or not I respond to that email right now and give it some time.
I can control whether or not I react or give myself some time to calm down.
I can control whether or not I agree with that email,
Or maybe there's something in that email that can actually help me better my skills.
I can control how I feel through controlling my perception about what's going on.
That's what I can control.
The third step is to ask yourself,
Well,
How do I want to feel overall?
Because without a goal,
The subconscious mind just keeps replaying the same tape over and over and over and over and over,
Where it's like,
Okay,
Now we know what went wrong.
Now we know what your emotions are and you can stabilize your emotions.
Now we're going to teach you how to move your emotions forward through the prefrontal lobe so you can start becoming the creator of your own reality.
And so the third question you ask yourself is,
How do I want to feel?
How do I want to feel?
Every day,
Dear one,
I am so aware that I want to feel peaceful.
That's why when work stuff gets on me and I have people telling me,
You have to do this and you have to do that.
I say to everyone,
No,
No,
Because I am not getting jacked up about X,
Y,
And Z.
I'm not doing it.
I'm approaching the way that I create videos,
The way that I create podcasts,
The way that I operate my coaching programs,
The way that I am as a life coach and one-on-one life coach,
The way that I am as a mom and a wife and a step-mom,
A friend,
A sister,
An aunt,
Whatever.
I operate my roles from a place of ease.
I will not be pressured.
I'm not doing it.
And so because I know that,
It's so much easier for me to make decisions about how I feel.
So if I know that I want to live in ease and I want to live in a state of equanimity,
Then I know that the decision that I have to make about this feeling that I have has to ebb in the direction of that value.
So what decision will I make if I find myself really,
Really excited or upset about an email that I received from a manager?
Well,
I think what I would do in that situation,
Because I know that I want ease,
Is I'm not going to react to this email right away.
I will probably send an email that says,
Thank you for your feedback.
I need a little bit more time to digest it,
But I will be back to you soon.
That would be the decision that I made.
And then from that point on,
I would really think about after your calm,
Is there anything I can learn of value in this email?
What are these emotions trying to tell me about the career choice that I've had?
How can I take more accountability and responsibility for how I feel,
For how I show up in the workplace and for my reactions and my skillset?
Now,
What you just heard me say is how can I bring all of this hypervigilant energy back to myself?
Dear one,
That's the only way to start feeling safe in your body,
Is to recognize how you're giving your energy away.
How in your hypervigilance,
In your fear of not being liked,
In your pursuit of validation,
In your fear of rocking the boat,
Which is codependency,
In your fear of other people's disapproval and rejection,
You don't feel safe in your body.
So when you bring all of this mind stuff back to yourself and all of this focus back to yourself and accountability back to yourself,
You will slowly begin to feel safer in your body because nobody owns you anymore.
And your energy is not being wasted.
It's not being projected into the field.
You're not going through all the same patterns you had in childhood.
You will slowly become a cycle breaker and you will know what it's like to create new cycles of growth and love and life,
Literally life force within you as you begin to do this sacred work.
I so hope that this has been helpful.
